


Angels In The Snow

by IncompleteSentanc (Erava)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Automail Fix-It, Casual Talks About Overthrowing The World, Fix-It, Gen, Ishval Civil War, Ishvalan Hate Train, Period-Typical Racism, Persecution, Pride's Magical Voodoo Bullshit, Prostitutes Are People Too, Team Mustang For Führer, Who Needs Flesh And Bone?, Wrath Is The Antichrist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 12:28:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15194801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erava/pseuds/IncompleteSentanc
Summary: Jennifer wakes up in Amestris with no recollection of how she got there, and plenty of recollection of how bad things go in her new universe. She attempts to use this knowledge to make her new world a better place. Things... don't always go as planned.Follows OC/SI from Pre-Civil War to Post-Manga.





	Angels In The Snow

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what I'm even doing in this fandom, but I wrote this at 3 AM and I hope it doesn't suck. Enjoy, as always, and don't judge me for not doing a Naruto fic! I swear I'll get back on that soon!

She wakes up with no recollection of where she is. It’s a white room with a curtain around her bed, so she immediately deduces  _ hospital, _ but how the hell had she gotten there? 

She blinks heavy lids, trying to clear the gunk from her eyes. “Jennifer.” Someone says and she looks sideways to see a man standing in an opening in the curtain. A doctor. “That’s your name, isn’t it? We found your ID with you. Jennifer Forrest.” She blinks again.

Her name  _ is _ Jennifer - but Jennifer Blunt, not Jennifer  _ Forrest. _ “Um. Yes, I’m Jennifer.” She says instead of correcting him, mostly because she’s already starting to realize something is not quite right here.

His stethoscope looks… ancient around his neck.  _ Ancient. _ His clothing style is outdated. Like something from the 1900s or so. The room looks different as well. The walls are stale and not quite a clean as they could be, the floor has marks all over it, and she’d never seen a hospital bed made out of this material before. 

“What the hell is going on?” Jennifer demands, a little dazed.

The man winces, looking down at her chart for a moment before looking back at her. “Miss Forrest. Before we go any further, you need to know. You lost both your arms.”

_ What. _

She freezes, stunned and utterly, entirely terrified for a moment. Then she looks down, chokes on a breath, and starts freaking the  _ fuck out.  _ Her arms are gone.  _ Gone. _ Without a goddamn trace, they just  _ stop at the shoulder. _ Bandages cover the damage, but there’s no hiding what  _ isn’t there. _

_ “What happened?!”  _ She shrieks, hyperventilating, and the doctor winces again before darting to the door and shouting for a nurse.

“Please, calm down, Miss Forrest.”

Calm down?! “CALM DOWN? Where the  _ fuck are my arms?!” _ She screams, heart racing a mile a minute in her chest. It’s pounding so hard she can barely breathe, and the world sways violently around her. She’s laying down, thankfully, but in the end sits up and doubles over, trying to make breathing a bit easier. It doesn’t help. There’s a hand on her back, the nurse saying something. 

“I’m giving you something to calm you down.” The doctor says before a rush of cold fluid is injected into her IV. 

It takes less than a minute. Maybe even less than thirty seconds. The sedation rushes over her and she slumps back in bed, breathing heavily. She wants to touch-... to touch her face. To wipe away her tears. To  _ touch something. _

But she can’t. She  _ feels _ her arms moving, but there’s no sensation in response. She knows,  _ knows _ they’re there, but they  _ aren’t,  _ and it’s fucking  _ wrong.  _

In school as a child, she’s heard this question a lot. ‘If you were an amputee what would you choose to lose? Arms or legs.’ Her answer had always been ‘legs’, naturally.  _ Naturally. _

Fuck.

Even as a kid she knew you needed your goddamn arms. Technology was advanced enough that fake legs worked basically as good as real legs, but less so with fake hands and  _ fingers. _

Prosthetics were advanced, but not advanced enough for real  _ finger movement, _ and you need that for so, so much. “Doctor?” Jennifer croaks, opening damp eyes to look at the sympathetic man. 

“Yes?”

“My hair is stuck to my forehead. Could you… move it?” She chokes out and he nods, reaching out to gently arrange her hair far away from her eyes. She swallows thickly when he does, pushing down grief and shock for the moment. Jen looks at the doctor searchingly. “What happened to me? I don’t remember a thing.”

“I’m not surprised. It was… traumatic, I’m sure.” The doctor shifts and sighs softly. “I can’t tell you much. I don’t  _ know _ much, just enough to treat you. The rest is a criminal case and outside my jurisdiction, so I can’t give you details. I can tell you that you appear to have been attacked in a satanic - which we know really means  _ alchemic - _ ritual. I…” The doctor loses his steam for a moment, grimacing softly at her. “I can also tell you that your mother did not survive whatever happened to you.”

Alchemic ritual? What the hell was an alchemic ritual? And…

And her mom?

She’s an  _ orphan! _ She doesn’t  _ have _ a mom. What the fuck?

“I’m confused.” Jen tells them.  _ “Really _ confused. Where  _ am _ I?”

“You’re in a hospital in Womiob.” The man says, eyeing her face for some reason. “A good thing, too. Anywhere else… they might not have tried so hard to save you.” He says quietly, and for a moment, she’s wondering exactly what bullshit that’s supposed to be.

“Why, because I’m an orphan?” She demands incredulously. 

He blinks at her.

She stares at him expectantly.

He blinks a few more times, tilts his head, and then stands up. “We’re almost on the border. That’s why I took care of you - some of us remember how the War started, and we know who is suffering for it in the end.” The doctor says, retrieving a reflective metal tray. He strides back over to her. “We’re just outside Ishval. That’s the only reason you found someone willing to treat… someone like you.”

Jennifer stares blankly at her reflection - which is not, to say,  _ at all her reflection!  _ Some stranger stares back at her, blinking in time with her, and Jennifer  _ stares. _

“Okay.” Something’s fucky.

Her hair is blonde. She’s supposed to have brown hair. Her eyes are…

Her eyes are  _ red,  _ which isn’t supposed to really be  _ possible. _ She’s still her usual, pale skin tone, so there’s that, but her own face is almost unrecognizable to her. Some features have stayed, like the shape of her eyes and lips, but the rest is… wrong. Her nose is a bit thinner than it had been, which was kind of a benefit, and her features were a bit…  _ buffer _ than before. Her jaw is more square than before. She still looks feminine, of course, but the changes are evident. 

On the up side, she always wanted to be a blonde.

On the down side, that was because she wanted to dye her hair into a rainbow without bleaching it first. She gets the feeling that hair dye is going to be a bitch to get ahold of in this place.

‘This place.’

Which, by the way, is apparently the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, going off the clues dropped so far.

“Shit.” 

“Jennifer?” 

She tries to hold up a hand to silence him. She then tries to drop her arm in frustration and smack the comforter.

Neither things happen. She has no arms, and it’s really fucking annoying.

“Zzp.” She silences the man. The doctor blinks at her, unimpressed and unamused. “Shh for a second, I’m thinking.”

She’s in the Fullmetal Alchemist universe.

She’s near Ishval, which means… near a lot of death, but also means near Resembool, which is a bonus? Maybe?

Wait, what does she mean ‘maybe?’

Automail!

“Doctor, am I applicable for automail surgery?” She asks eagerly and the man blinks again, this time in surprise.

“Uh. Yes. You’ll need to get a confirmation from an automail surgeon, of course, but I don’t see any reason for you to fail to meet their demands. You realize time is of the essence, yes?”

“Um. Wait, how bad?” She asks quickly, frowning.

“You have a thirty-six hour window to begin preparations for automail surgery. It’s been around twenty hours since you… lost your arms. If you want, I can try to call for a surgeon to get her and get your preliminary work done. But… you realize this is terribly expensive, yes?”

“I’ll rob a bank.” She says, 100% meaning it until she realizes the flaw in all her bank robbery plans. 

She’d made the mistake of planning them when she still had arms. Silly her.

What the hell would she use to hold up a bank without arms? A foot-gun? Her shiny teeth?

For a moment, she imagines trying to kill someone with a knife held by her foot.

That would… get messy quick, she thinks.

“I’ll figure something out.” She tells the doctor and he stares at her skeptically.

“The assessment alone is nearly-”

“I’ll figure it out!”

How hard could it be?

If she’s really in the Fullmetal Alchemist world - what the hell was that place called?

...Amestris. Or was that the country? Does it even matter?

If she’s really in Amestris, regardless of if it’s the name of the planet or the country, then technology is so far behind she probably  _ could _ rob a bank and get away with it. 

Then again, she could also probably just rack up a hospital bill and bolt like a thieving asshole. She’s not worried about being an asshole if it means she gets  _ arms. _

Why the hell doesn’t she have arms, anyways? The question sends a wave of unease through her. 

What had happened to kill her ‘mother’ and take her arms? Were they attacked? But… the doctor had mentioned an alchemy ritual…

“Are you certain, then? I’ll call the surgeon.” The doctor offers with a frown, clearly not confident in her judgement. How old is she, anyways? She’d looked pretty young in the reflection… younger than herself, at least. Her  _ usual _ self.

“Call them. I’ll handle the financial burden, don’t worry.” Was life insurance a thing in this world? Probably not. That would be too easy… 

“Alright. I’ll be back when I finish up my rounds.” He says before darting out of the room. 

It’s not until he’s already gone that she realizes she needs to pee. She stands up, awkwardly without her arms to give her extra balance, and half-wobbles her way to the bathroom. She sits down, relieves herself, and realizes her mistake.

At this angle, she could grab toilet paper using her feet.

But how the  _ fuck _ was she supposed to wipe?

 

* * *

 

After pulling some flexible bullshit to wipe herself - and pulling a muscle in her thigh as she did - she limps and stumbles back to bed and curls up on herself.

 

The world feels a lot colder without her arms to shield her.

 

* * *

 

So writing with her toes is A, easier than expected, and B, still fucking impossible.

So she scribbles her abc’s halfheartedly and makes it look even  _ worse _ than before, and sighs heavily. “This sucks ass.”

Her face itches. On the bright side, as soon as she nails down this touch-your-face-with-your-toes thing, she’s going to be  _ ridiculously _ flexible!

So it’s just a matter of tackling something that seems pretty damned impossible.

With her right foot writing nonsense could-be-letters-from-a-blind-person, her left is hovering awkwardly a good two and a half feet from her nose, where her itching spot is. 

After a moment, she sighs and gives up, instead raising her knee to rub her nose furiously against. It makes her nose start running. God damn it.

She awkwardly pats her nostrils with her kneecap. Fucking pathetic. Uhg.

“I hate this shit.” 

“Language.” The doctor warns as he walks in, a younger man trailing behind him. “This is Doctor Arnold Joseph. He’s the only like-minded automail surgeon in the region.”

“I’ve heard things about, ah… Rockbells?” Jen dangles the information like a piece of bait, and after a moment of thought, the doctor winces.

“That was before her son went into the thick of the Ishval War.”

“Mhm.” Dr. Joseph hums softly and examines her x-rays and unbandaged, mangled bits.

Thank God for the 1900’s (or 1910’s) leniency with painkillers, honestly, or this whole situation would be sooo much worse than it already was. Like this, she was too numb to feel physical pain, and too stoned to feel much emotional pain. It was, in her opinion,  _ awesome. _

“Well.” Dr. Joseph leans back and frowns softly. “The muscles seem responsive enough. They’re awfully-” something jolts her and she hisses, “-sensitive, though...” The automail surgeon frowns softly, rounding to her other shoulder and examining that area.

Detached enough to watch without puking, she takes in the fact that her arm was removed pretty damn perfectly. “Doctor Owens?” She asks the other doctor, who looks at her curiously. “How would you suggest my arms were removed?”

He blinks, blanches, and grimaces, looking mildly nauseated. “Ah… with surgical precision and ruthless butchering at the same time. It appears as if someone took a giant spoon to the joints of your shoulders and just… scooped the arms away.”

Okay.

She almost pukes, in the end, but manages not to vomit on her stoic surgeon as he jabs and shocks the pieces of her hanging out of the skinless, raw wounds. 

It takes… a lot of effort.

“Okay, I’m done.” Dr. Joseph says, clearing his throat. “You can definitely receive automail. I see promising signs for an above 90% recovery, as well. I’d estimate, at this point, that if you follow every step of recovery by the letter, you’ll recover… 93% mobility and function. Fine motor skills are going to be out of whack for a while, but with some practice, your brain will catch up to the new designations and treat them accordingly. With that in mind? Give me three years and I’ll have you at 93% recovery.”

She thinks about Edward in the story and his firm ‘one year’ statement.

She also remembers Pinako being outright unnerved and telling him it would be the most excruciating thing of his life.

“Three years sounds good.”

And so they get started.

It’s already the most painful thing she’s ever done.

 

* * *

 

 

“This life,” Jennifer groans on the bed as Dr. Joseph works around her, “sucks.”

“It’ll be over soon.” Dr. Joseph lies to her, like the lying liar he is. 

“I hate you.”

“You’re paying me.” He reminds her.

“I  _ really _ hate you.” She informs him curtly, then bites down hard and grits out a scream as he does  _ something fucking horrible _ to her left stump. 

It’s been one week.

She already fucking hates this place.

 

* * *

 

Jennifer Forrest was Jennifer Blunt. She remembers her life as Jen Blunt, but not a speck of her life as Jen Forrest.

She remembers being in the forest as Jen Blunt, and then waking up in the hospital as Jen Forrest. She remembers everything - but only to a point, and that bothers her.

Who was Jennifer Forrest? Who was she? Was she truly both Jennifers and only remembered being one of them until now, or was something else at work? Was it just some fucked up coma dream about waking up in a new world?

What the hell was it?

And who the  _ hell _ was Jennifer Forrest?

 

* * *

 

 

Jen searches and searches during her off time between procedures. Her arms are in constant pain - and she does mean that. She  _ feels _ her arms, enough to feel pain in them even though they’re gone. A side effect of the automail surgery, apparently.

A really, painfully annoying one. 

So Jen distracts herself with the one of many problems in between her procedures. She’s an expert in using her toes to flip pages now, and since she never leaves the sterile surgical area, no one bitches about her feet being gross from walking around. So she reads, no one whines about it, and she focuses on the problems at hand.

What was Amestris? What was the geography? What about the geography of the other countries? Who was Jennifer Forrest? And what are the implications of her wounds?

Those are the problems she dwells over, alternating every once in a while to keep things fresh.

Tonight, the thoughts are mostly on the implications of her wounds. She looks at the clean line severing the bone and flesh and of her arms and thinks,  _ Edward. Truth.  _

She feels the way her heart races and her breath catches at the very thought of discovering what happened to her and thinks,  _ Alphonse. Repressed memories. _

It frightens her, down almost deep enough to ignore.

It frightens her.

She doesn’t know what it means, that when even with the memories repressed, you’re so afraid of them that you freeze up at the mere thought of remembering them. 

It speaks of a deeply rooted instinct. Something that screams at her louder than usual. 

_ Did I see him? _ She wonders, biting her lip.  _ And if I did,  _ **_why_ ** _ did I? _ Jennifer wonders about her mother, checking the medical records when she can finally get ahold of them, and reading them exstensively. Her ‘mother’ had died of…

Oh.

Well.

That answered that.

Her lungs had been carved out by unknown methods. 

Jen closes the folder gently, grimacing deeply and looking at her right shoulder. 

There are bandages wrapped around it, mostly so she can’t see the damage done to the end of her stump. Wires and tubes stick out of it, and every time she so much as trembles, the ends of the wires stab into her raw body. 

It’s a less than pleasant experience.

“What the hell did you do, Elizabeth Forrest?” She wonders quietly. “And how was I dragged into it?”

She takes a few deep breaths, then flips the folder carefully back open. 

She hunkers down and gets to work.

 

* * *

 

 

Time moves slowly, and also quickly at the same time. The days drag on, but the weeks fly by, and soon, she finds herself out of the most painful part of the automail surgery - cutting off unnecessary bits and then connecting the nerves to artificial sensors. With that out of the way, it still  _ hurts _ like hell, but not so all-consuming anymore.

So she turns almost all her attention to her studies.

She even goes so far as to have Dr. Joseph stop by the hospital records and get a copy of her birth certificate for her.

It helps, a bit, to see the proof that she was, somehow, born in this world.

Or, at least, imaginary proof. If she’s in a coma dream.

Always a possibility.

With that in her hands, she’s able to confirm certain facts. For one thing, she was born. Cool. 

For another, her father is ‘unknown’ and her mother is, indeed, Elizabeth Forrest. She apparently shares a birthday with her alternate self, as well.  **‘Ishvalan’** , it says in big red letters in the corner of the folder. 

She’s Ishvalan, waking up in a world at war with her own people.

_ What a time to be alive, _ she can’t help but think a bit resentfully. At least indoors, she doesn't have to endure any persecution for her eye color.

But getting automail, Jen concludes later, is no joke.

And the idea of a kid going through it  _ is _ one, until you realize it isn’t an idea. It’s a reality.

Some kid goes through the Truth’s ministrations, and Jennifer is the end result of it.

She’s fifteen and has lost both her arms. 

She’s eighteen when she gets new ones.

 

 

* * *

It hurts like hell. Jennifer screams and cries and curls into a ball every night, but she does it anyways. The procedures, the nerve connections, the physical therapy -  _ God,  _ is the physical therapy hands down the worst of them all. 

She does it all and makes it in two and a half years, short of three years by almost eight months. “This is fantastic.” Jen says as she stretches her arms out, interlacing the fingers and pushing her hands palms out. She straightens her arms until they ache from that, too, then lowers them and looks at the doctor. “Dr. Joseph, what’s the chance I’ll crush something trying to pick it up?”

“Fairly high.” The doctor acknowledges as he scribbles in her chart. “Give it a few weeks before you try petting anything that’s alive, okay?”

“Uh. Sounds good, boss.” Jennifer wrinkles her nose at the idea of  _ why _ he feels the need to tell her that. “So be gentle?”

“Very gentle. We’ll practice with plastic balls.” The doctor explains, swishing the chart shut and walking across the room. He rifles through the cabinets and returns a moment later, tossing a cheap basketball at her. “Play.”

She winces at the very idea. Her shoulders ache viciously where the metal is sealed into place against her flesh. The metal plates consume her shoulders and shoulder blades, arcing around them in a wide, oblong circle. “I’d rather not.” She admits while reaching out. The metal pulls at her sore, angry red flesh.

“Take it.” Dr. Joseph insists and she winces again before reluctantly obeying.

As expected, the next few hours prove to be particularly painful.

As usual.

* * *

 

There is, however, an upside to it all.

She has arms again.

With an utterly reverent touch, Jen gently rolls an apple in one hand, the other holding a knife to carefully peel it. “I never have to worry about cutting myself again.” Jennifer realizes even as she peels. 

“Yes, but you can still damage the metal if you try hard enough. Don’t scratch it up.” Dr. Joseph warns.

“Yes, doctor.” Jennifer acknowledges, chewing on her lip as she looks out the kitchen window.

It’s like she’s seeing the world for the first time in the last two and a half years. Before, she was practically trapped inside the house, rarely able to leave the house due to her dependence on others. But now, she’s whole again, albeit more metallic than before. The world is out there again, waiting for her, and she desperately wants to dive into it. “Can I go into town?” She asks, and the scraping of the doctor’s plate pauses behind her.

“...Into town? What for?” He asks after a moment.

“I want to visit my old home.” Jennifer explains and there’s utter silence before there’s the sound of him gently setting down his fork and knife. 

“You know that will bring you nothing but bad memories.” He warns. 

“I know.”

“I don’t know much about the case before I got my hands on you, but whoever did that to your arms knew what he was doing. He was good. A medical expert, at the least.” The doctor pauses. “They never caught him.”

“No.” She concurs and he sighs softly.

“This isn’t a good idea. It won’t help you in any way - it’ll only set you back.”

“I need to see. I need to know.” Jennifer says quietly, and it’s not even a lie. She  _ needs _ to go, to see it for herself. The home she supposedly lived in. The home she almost died in. She needs to see it and understand what she’s missing from her memories. What life remains in the shambles of her home?

Surely there was some information she could gather from the building site of her ‘attack’, and the days before it. 

Despite Dr. Joseph’s warnings against it, he takes her to her house. She wears a pair of black slacks, a white t-shirt, a brown jacket, and black gloves. It’s not the most well put together outfit, but they threw it together last minute. Some hastily found sunglasses sit on her nose, hiding the reds of her eyes. 

She walks into the house, still locked from when the police sealed the crime scene, and drops her keys.

They hit the floor with a clatter that makes the doctor rush in after her. “Jen? What’s wrong?” He asks quickly.

She looks around the living room, slowly turning and taking in everything with growing dread.

“Everything is.” Jennifer says sincerely, recognizing bits and pieces here. Memories flicker in her mind - the fireplace being lit and the warmth on her skin. Seeing the dragon trinket on the bookshelf in a little shop window. Finding that piece of drywood on display in a shallow river not far from the house.

The floorboards covered in blood.

Except they aren’t, now. There’s no blood anywhere. 

“Someone cleaned up.” Jennifer realizes and the doctor starts at her side.

“What? That’s ridiculous. You must be misremembering something.” 

“The floor was covered in blood.” Jennifer says numbly. She remembers her mother lying-... “There.” Jennifer points at where a woman’s - her  _ mother’s  _ \- split open corpse had lain, not a trace of blood in the floor. “That’s where my mother was. Where’s the blood?”

The doctor looks at the ground, troubled, and says nothing.

* * *

 

She spends the day going through ‘her’ things. Turns out, she actually has a lot of nice clothes she’s glad for. She takes off the crappy outfit and pulls on a new one - a red tank top dress, a grey, long sleeved sweater dress on top of that, black tights, and the black boots and gloves from before. 

The clothes fit her pretty well, considering she’s been gone for two and a half years of growing up. She collects things that might help her later - letters, labelled pictures, and some paperwork - and leaves behind everything that won’t - family photos, mementos, and extra comforts.

She goes back to the house with a silently worrying doctor driving the car. “I asked Cindy to leave some dinner for us.” He explains, referring to his nurse, and she nods absently. 

They pull in, find curry waiting on the counter, and chow down as appropriate.

She scans the letters she snagged in the meantime, eating with one hand - her  _ hand!  _ Not her foot! - and flipping through papers with the other.

She comes across it almost when they’re done with dinner, when she reaches the bottom of her stack of letters and moves on to her ‘mother’s’ stack. 

The first letter has her stopping. “Doctor?” She asks, a little bit faintly, and he hums curiously in question. “What’s ‘consumption’?”

He pauses.

She looks at him, face pale, because she recognizes that term from her other life, even if she doesn’t know exactly what it actually means. Consumption was an illness that she knows took many lives, but  _ what _ illness?

“Typically? Tuberculosis.” He explains quietly. “It… kills a lot of people.”

Jennifer bites her lip and looks at the letter.

Her mother’s handwriting (she remembers that, now) looks up at her, detailing a sickness she knows she never knew about. The letter even says it was kept a secret from her, but as it goes on, it becomes less coherent. Less sensible. The half written letter she’d grabbed without looking and stuck under it in the stack is even worse.

It speaks of many crazy ramblings, but a few things in particular jump out at her.

One is the last line.

_ ‘If my lungs won’t work for me anymore, then I will find new ones. Forgive me, Hohenheim.’ _

Jennifer stares at the name, and then stares some more.

“...Fuck!”

Given the sheer amount of chaos and  _ shitshows _ that followed the man’s wake, Jennifer wanted nothing to do with the legendary father of Ed and Al. He was a pivotal character in the story, but she didn’t want to be dragged into that mess. She wanted to mind her own business and live in peace, but apparently, that wasn’t going to happen.

Two and a half years, she’d held on to the hope that that she’d get out. That she’d wake up and be free again. That she’d wake up and have arms.

It never happens. She wakes up without arms, or with false ones. She wakes up in the doctor’s home, under his care, in yet another day of hell.

_ Forgive me, Hohenheim, _ her mother had written, but why? What had led her to even know the man, much less beg his forgiveness for something she wasn’t even doing to him? What about this affected Hohenheim enough to elicit a written apology, when she herself didn’t get one?

It was her damn lungs the crazy woman had apparently tried to steal, after all.

A month of physical therapy later and she’s no closer to solving the mystery. She learns plenty about her mother, and her hidden sickness’ development, the descent of her madness - all of it. But nothing about Hohenheim, aside from a few mentions here and there. She mentions missing him and hoping he’s well, and that’s just about all of it.

Who the hell was this woman, and what was her connection to the Elrics’ father?

She still has no answer when the time comes.

“I need the money.” The doctor tells her grimly, two weeks before her scheduled ‘release’ date. 

She doesn’t balk, silently signing the papers to sell her one and only possession.

Her home, left to her after her mother’s death.

She signs the papers away and the doctor takes them with a sigh, rubbing at his brow. “Thank you, Jennifer. This will support me for the upcoming year.”

“I owe you it, doctor.” She says honestly enough. “You’ve given me back my life.”

But how long would it last?

“My pleasure, Jennifer. My honest pleasure.” He says with a small smile.

He’s an older fellow, twice her meager age of eighteen, but the age seems to melt away with his smile - and suddenly, it doesn’t seem to matter so much. He’s young again, and the man who saved her life, dragging her from the dredges of it and back into the sunlight again.

She kisses him without thinking, and pulls away before he can think. “Don’t say anything.” She pleads, already embarrassed. He’s seen her in horrible states during their ‘friendship’ and some more mortifying than others. But for a split second, that hadn’t mattered. “I just wanted to tell you.” She murmurs, ashamed. 

His thumb rubs over her knuckles. “Get some rest.” He says softly, but before she can do more than begin to pull away, he leans down and kisses her cheek. It’s a gentle kiss, but his eyes are sad when he pulls away, and his smile is regretful. 

He doesn’t need to say anything. She smiles back at him and pulls away more gently than before. She straightens up, wiping off imaginary dust, and folds her hands in front of her with a quiet clatter of metal. “Good night, doctor.”

“Good night, Jennifer.” He returns in a low rumble before stepping away. They separate, heading their own ways, and Jennifer goes to the downstairs hospital-esque bedroom while he goes upstairs. “Oh, and Jennifer?” He adds in the doorway. She pauses to look at him questioningly and he smiles wryly at her. “Call me Arnold.”

She beams at him before ducking into her room, closing the door quietly behind her.

In another life, she’d been so young and naive when she first started dating.

It feels like the same thing in this one.

* * *

“Where will you stay?” Arnold asks her two weeks later. 

“I think I’ll travel for a bit. Find a place to get my feet under me.” She wants to visit the nearest alchemical library as soon as possible, so the East City is the closest bet...

“You’ll remember my number?”

“Of course.” She kisses him softly on the cheek, in the corner of his lips. It’s the closest she ever comes to kissing him again. “I’ll keep in touch, Arnold. Take care of yourself, and the house.”

“I’ll give it to a good family.” Arnold promises with a hint of amusement that has her grinning in spite of the grimness of the humor. After all, they were talking about where she’d been brutally attacked and her mother killed in what was essentially a satanic ritual. 

“Good.” She leans into his embrace for a moment longer, then sighs before extracting herself from his grasp. “I need to go. The train…”

“Of course.” He nods, lifting her bag for her. She takes it gently and swings it onto her shoulder - ouch - then smiles at him.

“Thank you, Arnold.” She says, in much the same tone someone might confess their love.

It’s quiet but no less fierce for it, and for a moment, Arnold blinks at her. Then he swallows once and nods, shortly.

“Of course.” He says, clearing his throat. “You should go. Before it gets much later.”

“Yes.” She concurs, and they stare at each other for a long minute.

He reaches down and cups the side of her face, thumb running just under her sunglasses. “Never take these off.”

“I won’t.” She swears sincerely. The last thing she wants is to be persecuted. 

“Go."

“I won’t say I love you.”

“You don’t.”

“I could.” Jennifer offers instead. “Say the word.” She suggests, and he stares at her longingly for a moment before smiling sadly.

“Go, Jen. I’ll see you when you come back home.” He promises.

She blinks in surprise. “Home?”

He grins a little at her, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “The house is yours. I just wanted to make sure you were a woman of your word is all.” He tears it into fours and then offers it to her.

She takes the tattered remains, and once glance confirms the validity of his statement. It’s the deed signing her ownership over to him, and it’s in many, many pieces.

“Thank you, Arnold.” She murmurs.

“Thank me by getting on that damn train already.” He jokes and she grins briefly at him, eyes stinging.

She turns her head, ducking it a bit, and blonde bangs cover her face. 

She turns and gets on the damn train.

* * *

East City is even more beautiful than she’d expected. It’s also way, way busier. It’s nothing like what she’s used to - she lived in  _ Vegas, _ after all - but it’s still pretty damned crowded as she tries to navigate the train station.

It takes her a while to get out of the building and flag down a cab, longer still to find a place that’s offering work. From there, she ditches the cab and walks, going from place to place and making her applications, until she scores a job at the fruit market.

“I need someone to tend the stall during the night.” The elderly farmer explains. “My granddaughter tends to it during the day, and I take care of it at night, but my bones aren’t as young as they used to be.” He chuckles a bit hoarsely and Jennifer smiles warmly at him.

“Do you mind me wearing my sunglasses? I have extremely sensitive eyes.”

“Albino?  Your hair  _ is _ awfully pale.”

“What? No.” She says quickly, because a perfect excuse is a fucking dangerous one when ‘red eyes’ are involved. Even if albinism red eyes are way, way different - no one would stop long enough to care. “Accident when I was a kid. Never look at the sun for too long.” She says, half-joking and half lying, and the man blinks at her.

“You… stared at the sun too long?” He croaks.

“Yes, sir.”

“...I see. And you think you can handle a fruit stand?”

“I’m sure of it, sir.” She promises warmly, hiding her amusement at his sudden doubt in her. 

“Well... alright, if you’re sure. Meet me here tonight at seven and I’ll walk you through it all.” He says slowly and she nods reassuringly.

“Of course. I’ll be here at seven.”

With that, she leaves, heading for the next great adventure: the library.

It takes a long time for her to find one.

It takes her a very short time to realize she’s way, way out of her league.

Alchemy is… mind numbing.

_ Mind numbing. _ Not in the boring way, but in the stunned, ‘what just hit me in the head’, stupid kind of way. It’s  _ too much _ information. It’s far more scientifically advanced than she’d been expecting, and she’d stopped taking science classes after high school. “Fuck me.” She mutters into the first book she’d found, then goes out to find a much stupider version of it.

She doesn’t succeed. It’s all way beyond her paygrade.

* * *

 

Diving right in isn’t going to work, so she gives up after the first month of trying. And she  _ does try _ for a month - but with no progress and mounting frustration, she was forced to give up. 

It’s not that she can’t learn it - it’s that she doesn’t have someone there to break down the parts she can’t wrap her head around, which makes the entire thing fall apart before she can get very far with any sort of learning plan. 

So she gives up, focusing instead on the absolute  _ basic _ basics of alchemy.

If Edward Elric could understand alchemy at four, she can figure it out at almost nineteen, god damn it.

She refuses to give up.

So she researches and researches, probably learning at the world’s slowest rate, and slowly begins to understand it. She’s nineteen when she performs her first transmutation and turns a sheaf of paper into a folded flower.

She keeps the flower with her always.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed. Please review, I'd love the inspiration in these hard times ♥


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